Ruth Zwald's collection of poems,
Bones and Breath
, takes us on a spiritual journey that begins with the death of her father and concludes with what she believes it will be like "when it is my turn to go." In this collection are stories of family, and stories about stories. "It happened like this," she tells us as she relates the death of both her parents, yet she ends the poem with "Stories wait to be told." She asks in the first poem, "make me a keeper of bones," and in one of the final poems we find her "piecing together the past/stitching my ancestors' stories." Bones and stories, stories and bones. In this collection they seem to be interchangeable. As the title and sections indicate, we move from bones and grief into breath, from "the stories told in the dark nights" to the time and place where "we begin singing new ones." In "the long grasses of summer," Zwald speaks of her ancestors, men and women "preserving what could be preserved/which they know is very little for not very long." She joins her ancestors with this collection of poems, preserving their bones and stories through poetry.
Anita Skeen, author of
The Unauthorized Audubon
and
Never the Whole Story